Mundane science fiction (MSF) is a niche literary movement within science fiction that developed in the early 2000s, with principles codified by the "Mundane Manifesto" in 2004, signed by author Geoff Ryman and the "2004 class" of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. The movement proposes "mundane science fiction" as its own subgenre of science fiction, typically characterized by its setting on Earth or within the Solar System; a lack of interstellar travel, intergalactic travel or human contact with extraterrestrials; and a believable use of technology and science as it exists at the time the story is written or a plausible extension of existing technology. There is debate over the boundaries of MSF and over which works can be considered canonical. Rudy Rucker has noted MSF's similarities to hard science fiction and Ritch Calvin has pointed out MSF's similarities to cyberpunk. Some commentators have identified science fiction films and television series which embody the MSF ethos of near-future realism. MSF has garnered a mixed reception from the science fiction community. While some science fiction authors have defended the proposed subgenre, others have argued that MSF is contrary to the longstanding imaginative tradition of science fiction, or questioned the need for a new subgenre.
History and origins
Mundane Manifesto The MSF movement, which was inspired by an idea from British computer programmer Julian Todd, was founded in 2004 during the 2004 Clarion West class by novelist Geoff Ryman among others. The beliefs of the movement were later codified as the Mundane Manifesto. The authors of the Manifesto stated that they were "pissed off and needing a tight girdle of discipline to restrain our sf imaginative silhouettes". Ryman, "[b]elieving that much science fiction, employing far-fetched concepts and unlikely technologies, is simply escapist, [he] felt that this new focus on the here and now would give science fiction more relevance and greater social and political power." Kit Reed's 2004 interview with Ryman states that the "young writers decided they wanted to limit themselves to the most likely future. This meant facing up to what we know is coming, dealing with it, and imagining good futures that are likely." Ryman explained the MSF Manifesto in a speech to BORÉAL’s 2007 Science Fiction convention in Montreal. Ryman claims that the MSF Manifesto was "jokey" and that it was not intended to be a "serious" statement. The authors of the MSF Manifesto, apart from Ryman, are anonymous.
Precursor movements: 1930s–1970s Lisa Yaszek states that in the early 1930s, the editor of Amazing Stories, scientist and science journalist T. O'Conor Sloane, wrote "'mundane science fiction' before that term ever existed, and he banned faster-than-light travel from science fiction stories" in the magazine, so writers began using "dream narratives... as a way to travel through time and space and time." Nataliya Krynytska states that in the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet literature had a genre called "near-future science fiction". Describing the context for the emergence of MSF, Christopher Cokinos cites Chris Nakashima-Brown in noting that a considerable body of science fiction entails fantasies about escape from scientific reality: "the escape from the subtly Nihilistic dominion of reason in the post-Enlightenment West, into a generically unbound Jungian Disneyland...". He argues that in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, stodgy tales of space opera "bland prose" and "formulas of planetary romances, über-robots, and cold equations" dominated. He also points out that SF writer Thomas Disch has similarly opined that the preference for weak, implausible depictions of science in sci fi is an "American aspect of our 'lie-loving' culture" used by readers for escapism. Some Golden Age writers, however, such as Theodore Sturgeon, Philip José Farmer, and Ray Bradbury did transcend these formulas and developed nuanced characters and stories. Cokinos goes on to state that in the 1960s, various authors launched science fiction's New Wave, when "stylistic experimentation" in the writing and new topics meant less formulas and clichés. The authors had a profound "skepticism about science and technology", and there was an examination of "inner space" (J. G. Ballard), "feminist...critiques, and ecology (Frank Herbert’s Dune). Similarly, BBC TV critic Hugh Montgomery notes that J.G. Ballard believed that the Golden Age’s focus on advanced interstellar spaceships was "clichéd and unilluminating", preferring to write stories about humans’ "next five minutes" and "near future", which is "immediately recognisable to us, but invariably with a pretty unpleasant twist or three." In Damon Knight's essay entitled "Goodbye, Henry J. Kostkos, Goodbye", from the 1972 Clarion II workshop, he criticizes "old guard" science fiction, including space operas and stories about travel between stars and space colonization. Knight states that "it [would] perhaps be better to stay on this planet, clean it up a little, and reduce our numbers to some reasonable figure".
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